Chapter 27 A Courage That Sheds No Blood #2
“Little gnat.” The words tumble carelessly out of Nugau’s lips, but Sascia is enraptured.
For the first time, it sounds like a nickname, like endearment.
Raised on an elbow, Nugau is gawking with eyes wide as saucers—at the slit on the ceiling, slowly stitching itself together, at Sascia. “Did you ask Mooch to do that for you?”
“No, it’s just generous that way.”
“But during the Heart Trial, you did ask it to help. I heard you speak to it. And just now, before it appeared, I could feel you…calling it. Like we aesin call our powers.”
“But I’m not aesin.” And, she doesn’t add, I’m not magic either.
“Humor me.” Nugau shifts to a cross-legged position. “Close your eyes.”
Sascia doesn’t—but only because she’s too curious to see what Nugau will do next. Their eyes are closed. Soft tendrils of black curl around their long fingers.
“Spread your awareness,” the princet continues. “Think of the Dark, all around us, vast and powerful. Of how it stretches and narrows and shifts. A place of infinite change. Reach into it and send out your command.”
At that last word, the Dark tucked in the corners of the room, the vines of the ceiling, and the moss on the floor all shoots to Nugau’s palm and crystallizes into a long shaft with a curved blade. His scythe, Sascia realizes. He fashions it out of Dark itself.
Sascia looks down at her own fingers, spreading them into an open palm. “It doesn’t feel like a command. All the interactions I’ve had with Mooch and my other moths, they feel like a conversation. Equal parts giving and taking.”
Nugau slips off the sofa and comes to their knees in front of Sascia. Their voice is soft when they ask, “Show me.”
Heat creeps up Sascia’s neck. Beneath the full force of Nugau’s focus, she feels choked and just a little bit light-headed.
She shuts her eyes and spreads her awareness, just as she’s been instructed to, but its range is small.
She can only sense the heat of the leather beneath her bottom, the undercurrent of pain in her abdomen, the princet’s breath against her skin, the eerie absence of matter in the pockets of Dark around the room, the—
Oh. There it is.
Now that she’s been forced to pay attention, it is all around her, like Nugau said.
Not absence of matter, but an essence in constant flux, shaping and reshaping itself.
Sascia cannot sense it exactly, not with any physical receptor of her neurological system, but rather with a vague perception of elsewhere, elsewhen—like those few seconds of lucid dreaming before you jolt truly awake.
Grabbing for it feels like a violation; instead Sascia reaches out with a question, a silent, unshaped wish: come.
Tiny feet land on her palm.
Across from her, Nugau is breathing hard. His long bangs drape over his face, framing his dark eyes with strands of black silk. His hands hover on each side of Sascia’s palm, as though protecting a flame from the wind.
“What’s wrong?” Sascia asks.
“I have never felt anything like this. You didn’t send out an order. You sent a—I’m not sure what the right word is. It kept changing shape, like the Dark itself does, at times a plea, at times a claim, at times something else entirely.”
(Sascia knows the right word, but dares not say it, not out loud, not to Nugau: a longing.)
“I wonder…” Nugau whispers.
Squatting before Sascia, their height puts them at eye level with her.
Their hands have come to rest on each side of her thighs.
The distance between them is so narrow; if Sascia leaned in, she would touch them, just as Nugau begged for all those weeks ago—just as her own body begs.
But she can’t. Sascia doesn’t think Nugau finds her vexing anymore, but the doubt still remains.
If she touches them, will she be making the wrong choice, the one that leads to Nugau on the brink of death, Nugau despairing, Nugau kissing her farewell?
Will she be sealing their mutual destruction with the touch of their lips?
“All aesin are warriors first, but my parent Kilorn was also a scholar,” Nugau says.
“When the first doorways opened, raining your bombs on our land, Kilorn looked for answers in the old lore: why the itka brought our worlds together, how we were meant to save each other. They found none and, eventually, their research cost their life. Upon their death, the Queen forbade further study and set out to rid us of the threat of humans the only way she knows how. She and the rest of the aesin believe Kilorn was enamored with a fairy tale. That the itka are just rare creatures with strange abilities and not benevolent gods who wish to save us.” His gaze bores into Sascia.
“But if they felt what I just felt, if they saw Mooch bring you exactly what you need…”
“They would understand that the itka are trying to help. That there is a purpose behind all of this—” Sascia pauses, her mind slipping back to the Nugau of the future bidding her farewell.
My only regret is that we never found it.
The soron mola, the true purpose behind the ymneen.
That alone could have saved us. “We were looking for it. The soron mola.”
The princet’s gaze becomes ravenous, as though they can drink Sascia up with their eyes alone. “How do you know that term?”
“You mentioned it to me. When I met the version of you from the future, you said we were trying to find it. You believed it could save us.”
“These two words were scribbled over and over in my parent’s notes.
It’s an archaic term that can mean both purposeful truth and true purpose.
Kilorn believed that it signifies the true reason why the itka open the doors between worlds.
That if we understood it, we would know how we’re meant to save each other.
” The princet pauses to take a long, steadying breath.
“With the soron mola, we could convince them all—aesin and humans alike. We could be allies instead of enemies.”
Sascia’s heart hammers in her chest. Allies: Nugau is talking about peace. Not retreat, not separation, but coexistence. She leans close to Mooch where it’s rifling around the chips bag. “What is the purpose, little guy? Why did you open the door?”
At the sound of her voice, Mooch peeks out of the bag, depthless black eyes peering up, antennae standing ramrod still. For a long moment she is sure it will answer, give her one of its wordless clues, but the moth just flutters its wings at her and returns to munching.
On their knees before her, Nugau wears a faraway look.
“We can’t convince the aesin your kind is innocent, because you’re not.
You threw those bombs into the Dark with no knowledge of where they would end up or who they would hurt.
You didn’t care who got hurt—the Queen’s council will use that to their advantage.
But we can convince them that there is a reason the itka answer your call.
That they opened the door because our two worlds can help each other in the future. ”
“The Ul’amoon,” Sascia says breathlessly.
“They have caused havoc in both our worlds. What if the itka brought us together to defeat them? What if, when we present our evidence to the Queen, I show them how I call Mooch? They will feel what you felt, and see it rip open the fabric of time and space to bring me what I need, and they will realize that it did the same for them. That it brought us together because we need to unite against an enemy neither of us can face alone.”
“Screw the Queen,” Nugau says, quiet and rough.
“You’re right—there is no time to wait for her.
And we don’t have to. It is traditional for the sovereign to set the Heart Trial, but we don’t really need her.
As long as you prove your Claim before the aesin and they beat their chests for you, the magic of the Thistha Ren is complete. ”
“What are you proposing exactly?” Because there is a proposition here, and judging from Nugau’s cautious tone, Sascia is not going to like it one bit.
“Let’s set our own Trial. A grand performance before the whole army, where they can see how humans and aesin can be useful to each other against our shared enemy. My mother is not a fool. If the army is on our side when she returns, she will have to try things our way.”
Our way. Hope unfurls in Sascia’s chest.
“It’s going to be dangerous—it has to be if we want the aesin to truly believe—but, please, little gnat,” the princet whispers, “will you try?”
“I will,” she whispers back, “you know I will,” and this precious tender thing between them becomes an oath, a promise: she will try and Nugau will try, their only weapon a courage that sheds no blood.